Present Laughter, Yvonne Arnaud Theatre, Guildford

The hyper philanderer

With Rik Mayall around, a signed performance is redundant. The intricacies of plot may not be conveyed by his revolving arms and the figure-eights he makes with his head, but there is never any doubt about his emotions. To get across the idea that love causes pain ("There's something inherently sad about happiness, isn't there?"), he mimes being toppled by lightning, committing seppuku, and hanging on the old barbed wire. Even without being in love, the man clearly risks doing himself an injury.

This hyper-activity is particularly off-key in Present Laughter, Noël Coward's 1939 farce about a performer who is always acting, to the point that he confuses not only the other people in his life but himself. Mayall's pretences, though, wouldn't fool a baby, and his coarse accent belies his supposed upper-crust charm. Coward, who of course played the part of Garry Essen-dine, man of many dressing gowns, still casts an intimidatingly long shadow, but avoiding his clipped disdain is not in itself a solution.

Nor is reminding the audience of the reality behind Coward's matinée-idol status: Twitching with fear when his secretary mentions "a rather complicated letter from some Boy Scouts", and flapping like a gaffed fish when he accidentally puts his hand on another man's crotch, then falls on top of him, Mayall seems to have suddenly turned into Michael Barrymore.

But, while these characteristics come across simply as vulgar anachronisms, they might convince if taken further and more seriously – indeed, given Garry's utter immersion, like Coward, in his work, one could well believe that sex, for him, would mean simply grabbing anything nearby and sentient for relief. Garry's constant anxiety would make more sense if he were not simply an egomaniac but a man in terror of betraying his lowly origins and his bisexuality.

Dominic Dromgoole's production, which needs to take on some speed (a second intermission doesn't help), makes obvious in other ways the profoundly male nature of this close-knit theatrical world. Garry's trouser-clad secretary, Swedish cook, and wife (who walked out several years ago but still devotes her life to him) are all Good Chaps, as loyal and sensible as the play's Real Women are not. The latter are a hysterical debutante and the vain, bored wife of Garry's producer, who are both interested in the same part of Garry's anatomy: his scalp. Caroline Harker as Garry's wife, Pooky Quesnel as the secretary, and Kim Thomson as the producer's wife all give nicely judged performances that are in keeping with the period.

The frequency with which Garry changes his bedmates – about as often as he does his socks – might not be depicted in the most realistic manner, but one has to hand it to Coward for knowing how to keep the audience from disliking his philandering hero. Garry is no corrupter of the young or faithful: silly girls and depraved women throw themselves at him so persistently one can hardly blame the poor man for giving in. Afterwards, Garry's wife bawls him out, saying that, at his age (40), he ought to be giving up that sort of thing.

In Garry, Coward is clearly parodying and celebrating himself, but he may also have been influenced by one of his admirers. Eric Dare, the author in Cole Porter's Jubilee (1935), is caught out when he opens his heart to a woman who recognises the speech as being from one of Dare's plays. In Present Laughter the same thing happens to Garry. Is this a case of art imitating art imitating art?

Continues at the Theatre Royal, Bath, 24-29 March (01225 448844)